Google Is Smarter Than You

Ted Ulle, Tedster in WebmasterWorld, a person I highly respect in the industry, wrote a heart-felt post in the forums.

He basically explained why SEOs should be humble in what they do and be cautious in how they view Google's changes and think deeper in how they deploy their SEO decisions. Why? Because Google is smarter than most of you and definitely smarter than Ted or myself.

I know many many SEOs that tried to work at Google and have failed throughout the interview process. Many of those people are probably smart enough but don't necessarily have the culture Google is also looking for in a candidate. But working for Google and working as an engineer for Google is totally different.

Do you understand what goes into Google's algorithms? I understand it at a high level but the details and how they work, not you or I can build it. Maybe a few people at Google can comprehend the whole thing but it is much larger than one person. Thing is, Google as a whole is way smarter than you or I.

Ted sums much of this up well in this one line, where he says Google focuses on their users, you should do the same:

It's easy, in a frustrating situation, to lose track of the fact that Google doesn't focus on me - that they're focus is on THEIR user base, just as my focus should be on mine. Emotion will not resolve an SEO problem - that's a fact!

Now, why is this important for SEOs? There is a bigger picture here and you must educate yourself constantly to get a glimpse of just a small piece of the puzzle. You or I will never understand it all, heck - no one really does. The closest person to who may understand all the pieces is Amit Singhal at Google but outside of him, maybe very few.

Ted explains the SEO implications:

So we need to stay realistically humble when we analyze what Google is doing or even trying to do. Otherwise we're going to make TERRIBLE SEO DECISIONS, based on our own blind spots rather than the real situation. Or even worse, we'll spend all kinds of energy assuming we can't do anything about our situation. Then we just whine and wring our hands, but we don't start winning again.

The biggest error I've seen is assuming we can read the hidden intentions of any other individual, and especially those of a corporation. This is dangerous territory. It's where we have a strong tendency to project our own hidden character onto another, rather than seeing ther situation clearly. And with so many people inside a corporation affecting the group's action, it gets even worse.

I suspect this might make for a good SEO discussion at WebmasterWorld.